Bass, kick, panning and more

[StiffMittens]

In the Beatles panning thread, someone commented that they got more definition by panning the bass off center. Do any of you other experienced engineers have any comments about this? Do you think it's a bad idea to try and pan the bass slightly right and the kick slightly left, keeping the snare and lead vocals at dead center? Do you think it will be more of headache trying to balance out the level of the master left and right than it's worth? Someobody else made a comment about the left and right channels getting out of phase. Are there any specific strategies to combat this? What's the first indication that you've developed this sort of problem in your mix?

Oh, and what's the meaning of life?

;-}

St!ff

 

[Farview]

It is a far better idea to eq the kick and bass out of each others way. If the two are fighting, you need to change one of them. If you learn how to do that with all the instruments, you will have clean, clear mixes with that elusive 'air'.

 

[StiffMittens]

Can you give me some more specifics

As usual, the answer to this is that it depends on what you think sounds good and what you're trying to achieve, but...

Could you give me a more specific example of how you have gone about this and achieved a result that you were happy with? I mean how severely would you tend to notch things out? I've heard some folks comment that they think the kick should be deeper than the bass. Personally, I tend to think the opposite. I think the kick should be more like a punch in the gut (that slap of knuckle against flesh and a muffled throaty "oomph!" from the poor bastard who just got nailed) and the bass should make your colon spasm. What's your recipe?

St!ff

 

[knightsy]

Deep kick or deep bass? I'm gonna give the answer that every newbie recordist fears: It depends on the song/band.

And there is a way you can do both, but I'll leave that to someone else to explain, I'm way too tired.

 

[mixsit]

Deep kick or deep bass? I'm gonna give the answer that every newbie recordist fears: It depends on the song/band.

And there is a way you can do both, but I'll leave that to someone else to explain, I'm way too tired.

Yes. The question roughly comes down to whether you want the bulk of the low end to be more from the percussion of the kick with the bass being tilted toward the throaty end, or a lighter kick and the possibly more lyrical bass end, or even anything in between.
As far as eq and dynamic control goes, there's the task to get them both in the right nieghborhood for their rolls, then fine tuning them in context to complement.
Wayne

 

[Ronan]

In the Beatles panning thread, someone commented that they got more definition by panning the bass off center. Do any of you other experienced engineers have any comments about this? Do you think it's a bad idea to try and pan the bass slightly right and the kick slightly left, keeping the snare and lead vocals at dead center? Do you think it will be more of headache trying to balance out the level of the master left and right than it's worth?

I did a bunch of records for a client that insisted that the kick and bass be panned off center. I hated it. It always sounded worse to me. The low end lost its punch and definition, and the whole mix sort of losses its cohesiveness. The client and I had a lot of debates about this, but he was adamant about this and ultimately it was his bands records and not mine (and it he was paying pretty well and cool major label credits etc). Some times I like to pan the drums all the way left or right a la the beatles. This works for me because its a defined effect, but just off center sounds just like panned in the middle with less body and definition.

 

[Farview]

As usual, the answer to this is that it depends on what you think sounds good and what you're trying to achieve, but...

Could you give me a more specific example of how you have gone about this and achieved a result that you were happy with? I mean how severely would you tend to notch things out? I've heard some folks comment that they think the kick should be deeper than the bass. Personally, I tend to think the opposite. I think the kick should be more like a punch in the gut (that slap of knuckle against flesh and a muffled throaty "oomph!" from the poor bastard who just got nailed) and the bass should make your colon spasm. What's your recipe?

St!ff

What you do is find the solid part of the kick (that punches you in the gut), add a couple of db of that and take a couple of db of the same frequency out of the bass. The attack of the kick can be dialed in easily from 1k to 6k, just find a frequency that isn't fighting with anything.

You can go as far as you need to. On things that I need to get really loud, I band limit everything so nothing conflicts at all. Experiment.

 

[knightsy]

Yes. The question roughly comes down to whether you want the bulk of the low end to be more from the percussion of the kick with the bass being tilted toward the throaty end, or a lighter kick and the possibly more lyrical bass end, or even anything in between.
As far as eq and dynamic control goes, there's the task to get them both in the right nieghborhood for their rolls, then fine tuning them in context to complement.
Wayne

And you could also use the kick to duck the bass.

 

[kylen]

And you could also use the kick to duck the bass.

Unless you have those tracks frozen in your DAW (Audition, Sonar4) then all your ducks stop quacking...

 

[JohnnyMan]

Unless you have those tracks frozen in your DAW (Audition, Sonar4) then all your ducks stop quacking...

Kylen,

Would you please elaborate on the ducking issues with Sonar? Do you mean that if you wanted to duck with Sonar you would have to bounce the ducked bass to a new track?

Thanks,

John